


I've spent my days looking for you...

by IrisofParadise



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel
Genre: F/F, Soulmate Daemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22746460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisofParadise/pseuds/IrisofParadise
Summary: "Everyone had a daemon. This was just as known as the sky being blue and grass growing green. To be without a daemon was like walking around without a head. Completely unnatural and not right.Not everyone has a soulmate."... Or the daemon soulmate au for day seven of Widow Wives Week 2020.
Relationships: Yelena Belova/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	I've spent my days looking for you...

**Author's Note:**

> I've been pretty busy this week due to school buuut I'm actually quite proud of this oneshot! And of course, if you know me you know that I want to definitely expand on this just because I ended up getting a lot of headcanons for this au.  
> Of course, per my usual, Vladimir and Yelena are best friends. I also use Alex and Ava from 'Forever Red' once more.

Everyone had a daemon. This was just as known as the sky being blue and grass growing green. To be without a daemon was like walking around without a head. Completely unnatural and not right.

Not everyone has a soulmate. 

Soulmates are rare; not unheard of, just rare. And finding one’s soulmate was rarer still. When a person is born, if they have a soulmate then that person will have their soulmate’s daemon rather than their own. Which made sense as daemon’s were the physical manifestation of a person’s soul and who better to care for your soul than the other half of your heart, right? Correct.

The daemon knows instinctively that this human they start life with isn’t  _ their  _ person yet at the same time, they are. But they don’t know who their person is, let alone where they are, until their person actually touched them. Which, considering that touching another’s daemon was a thing just not done, often times even if the stars aligned and allowed soulmates to cross paths, soulmates would go through their lives never even realizing they’d met.

* * *

**_Kiev, Ukraine  
_ ** **_August, 1998_ **

From the time she was just four years old she’d known that Nikolai was not the manifestation of her soul but of someone else’s. Her soulmate’s. The other half of her soul.

Such a wild and large concept for someone so young.

They’d been in her room, playing a game of some sort that Yelena couldn’t remember now, when he’d told her that he wasn’t  _ her  _ soul. When Yelena’s eyes had teared up he’d swiftly turned into a ferret and climbed into her lap, nosing at her cheeks and quickly told her, “I’m always going to be here for you, Lena! I promise.” His whiskers tickled her nose and she’d giggled. “And this means you have a soulmate out there. One day you’re going to meet them!”

Suddenly the little girl was beaming down at her -- not hers but hers all the same -- daemon. “Yeah.” She wondered what her soulmate was going to be like. She was excited and filled with wonder.

When she’d told her parents her mother, Sofiya, had been amazed. Though there were stories of people waiting their whole lives for the other half of their soul, they were so rare. But once that lost love was finally found, finally home where it belonged, it was one of the sweetest and brightest feelings a person could ever feel. 

But her father, well Semyon had scowled and told her that she shouldn’t rely on her mother’s old fairy-tales of finding a lost soulmate. “You’ll spend your whole life waiting, Lenochka. They’re not worth it. Rely on yourself and no one else,” he’d told her sternly.

And though Yelena had held Nikolai tightly and listened to the daemon tell her just as sternly to not believe her father, that the man was wrong and that they would find her soulmate together, Yelena took her father’s words to heart.

A sad thing to do for a child so young.

* * *

**_Moscow, Russia  
_ ** **_January 2nd, 2005_ **

The first time their paths cross is on a cloudy day in the middle of the first week of January right in the middle of the Christmas market on Red Square.

Natasha is twelve and holding onto her younger brother’s hand tightly, afraid that she’ll lose him in the crowd. But the six year old is making her job of protecting him difficult as he’s staring in wide-eyed fascination at all of the lights and crowds.

“Please, Natashka! Can we get hot chocolate?” Alexei asks, pointing at a stand that sold coffee and cocoa. 

Natalia looked over at the stand selling the matryoshka dolls and sighed. ‘ _ They’ll be there after hot chocolate, _ ’ she thought to herself. She smiled down at the little boy, “Alright, Lyoshka. We can get cocoa.” She looked behind her where, a few feet behind trailing after them, were two cats.

One was a gray tabby cat with light green eyes, the other a pitch black cat with bright green eyes. They were playing around but it was clear that the black cat wasn’t letting the gray tabby out of his sight.

“Roza! Yevgeniy! We’re getting cocoa!” Natalia called out. 

The cats immediately perked up and ran over to their humans. The tabby cat leapt forward, turning into a small bird and perching herself on Alexei’s shoulder where she began excitedly asking her human if he would share with her.

Yevgeniy made a noise but didn’t say anything, clearly worried that Roza would become even more excited than she already was and an excited Roza enjoyed playing a tad too rambunctiously. But the daemon wound himself through Natalia’s legs and kept his opinions to himself. 

Natalia smiled softly. Her daemon was fiercely protective over her, her brother, and her brother’s daemon. Much like herself. It was quite odd in a way, though he wasn’t her daemon he still picked up her mannerisms and characteristics. She wondered if her soulmate’s personality had somehow bled over into Yevgeniy or if he acted solely like Natasha.

The redhead began leading the way over to the coffee and cocoa stall, saying a quiet, “I’m sorry, excuse me,” as a blonde girl dashed past her.

Yevgeniy froze for just a moment, nose in the air and twitching, but quickly shivered and ran to catch back up to Natalia. He, much like Roza just moments before, leapt into the air with his form changing into a hummingbird where he began to flit around Natalia and Alexei’s heads.

While the little blonde haired girl didn’t even bother with saying an apology for nearly bumping into the taller girl. A bright white cat was hot on her heels. He did not freeze and sniff the air but rather sneezed, nose twitching and eyes quickly looking around as he continued to chase after the little girl.

“Lena! Where are we  _ going _ ?” The cat asked in exasperation as he followed his person.

The little girl didn’t even slow down, just pulled her hat down to cover her ears and stated simply, “I’m hungry, Kolya. Mama and Papa gave us some spending money and I want trdelnik.”

Nikolai turned into a stark white fox, tail wagging quickly now. “You are sharing, right? I’m starving too!” He said, aiming for a pitiful tone but failing in his excitement. He knew the answer already, he just liked to ask.

Yelena smirked slightly, only humming in response.

Of course she would be sharing. Nikolai was her best friend.

After Yelena purchased the sugary treat the two sat down on a bench, Nikolai taking the form of a ferret, to share and watch as people walked around them. 

“Tetya Olga is going to be very upset that we ran off,” Yelena stated, biting into her treat. 

Nikolai nodded, a piece of the trdelnik in his hands, “Yeah. Hopefully she doesn’t tell your papa.”

Yelena wrinkled her nose. Her papa was a very stern man with very high expectations for her. He’d never hit her before in her life, or ever laid a hand on Nikolai even, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t show his displeasure to her. Typically in the form of sighing out a very tired, “I’m so disappointed in you, Yelena,” before turning away from her.

Her father was a Russian diplomat stationed in the Russian Embassy in Kiev. Her mother was Ukrainian through and through and took care of the home matters. And Yelena grew up with the best of the best tutors that money could buy. 

As if just talking about her aunt summoned her, the woman sees her and rushes over, hands on her hips, and a capuchin monkey perched on her shoulder. “Yelena!” 

Yelena groaned softly. 

Nikolai quickly scampered up her arm to rest around her neck where he whispered softly into her ear, “Here we go…”

“Where have you  _ been _ ? I turn around for one little minute, just one, and then off you go! What if you’d been  _ kidnapped _ ?!” Aunt Olga asked, questions tumbling out in a rush. Her daemon hopped down from her shoulder in favor of sitting on the bench next to Yelena and stared at both the girl and her daemon in pure disaproval.

Nikolai stuck his tongue out at the other daemon but when the monkey snarled, he quickly buried his face in Yelena’s arm. 

She was much different than her stoic and stern brother, Yelena’s father. Aunt Olga was much more emotional and wasn’t afraid to show it.

Yelena just held up her treat as though that should be answer enough. “Kol’ka and I were hungry and we saw a stall selling trdelnik.”

Aunt Olga just shakes her head, not appeased in the slightest. “You should have  _ asked _ , dearling!” She pauses then grins brightly at her favorite, only, niece. “Now, let’s make a deal.”

Yelena narrowed her eyes slightly, head tilting. “What kind of deal?” She asked slowly, already worried about what her aunt may try and get her to agree to.

Aunt Olga’s grin only grew as she held out her hand, clearly waiting for Yelena to take it, and says, “I promise not to tell your parents about you running off and worrying your poor, dear aunt, if you come and meet my friend’s son. Dmitri is such a smart boy and I’ve told him about you!”

She either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care when her niece makes a face. Instead the woman continues just as brightly, “He says you sound perfect! And he isn’t wrong,” Aunt Olga winks at her eleven year old niece.

Yelena takes one small bite of her trdelnik and ponders over the ultimatum. Being bored and listening to a stupid boy talk is much better than having her father give her the same old  _ ‘I’m so disappointed in you’ _ . So she took her aunt’s hand and shook it.

“Deal.”

Nikolai on the other hand groaned, turning into a little green garden snake and settling around the girl’s shoulder. It was so annoying how every time they visited with Aunt Olga the woman tried her best to matchmake her niece. As if Yelena didn’t already have someone out there waiting for her. 

* * *

**_Moscow, Russia  
_ ** **_January 7th, 2005_ **

When Natalia turned thirteen, just a few days after visiting the Christmas market with her family, her daemon takes a new form.

A white snowshoe hare.

Yevgeniy huffs slightly. “I was hoping to be something a bit cooler,” he sighs out, hopping around their bedroom. “Like a shark!”

Natalia snorted. “Then I’d have to live on a boat for the rest of my life, Geniya.”

Yevgeniy scratched the back of one ear with his hind foot. “Details, Natasha, details.”

Later that night Natalia lied on her stomach on her bed and flipped through a book. She wasn’t really reading it, just thinking about the form that her soulmate’s daemon had taken.

Rabbits were oftentimes overlooked as people just found them to be cute. Something to cuddle with as they were small and typically timid looking little creatures. They were highly social and emotional animals that displayed this in happiness or jealousy.

But rabbits aren’t just cute and cuddly creatures. They were a prey animal. And thus had to be perceptive to their environment. Were forced to be courageous and face danger head on. Their small size shouldn’t be mistaken for weakness as their quick-witted minds were ideal for escaping rather sticky situation.

Natalia felt that it was these later traits that may fit her soulmate as she couldn’t see herself being with someone who was timid.

* * *

**_Moscow, Russia_ ** **_  
_ ** **_January 7th, 2005_ **

Yelena is still only eleven when her soulmate’s daemon settles his form permanently. It’s a bittersweet feeling for the young girl.

She knows that foxes typically symbolize cunningness and wisdom. They’re smart creatures who are able to slip their way right out of any dangerous situation. She should be happy, proud even, that her soulmate was clearly someone with a smart mind. But, it hurt in a way. 

She wondered what her daemon’s form took.

Nikolai practically purred, or as best as he could in his final form of a red fox, as Yelena stroked him from the top of his head to the bottom of his fluffy tail.

“What do you think, Lena?” Nikolai asked, swishing his tail to and fro. “Do you like this form?” Though he seemed as though he were asking just out of curiosity, Yelena knew her closest friend’s true reason for asking as though he were actually her daemon and could read him like a book.

He was worried that she wouldn’t like him anymore.

Yelena just smiled softly and pressed her face into the fur at Nikolai’s neck. “Yes,” she breathed out. “I like it a lot.”

A moment of silence but for Nikolai’s happy purring-chirping like noise, and then Yelena was humming in thought. “I will miss you being a bunny though. Or puppy. And a kitten.”

Nikolai huffed good naturedly and swatted her softly with his paw. “You just like me when I’m cute!”

* * *

**_Odessa, Ukraine  
_ ** **_July, 2011_ **

The second time their paths cross, Natalia is eighteen and on vacation with her family. The family of four are sitting in a coffee shop. While Alexei speaks quickly to their parents, Natalia is on her phone, texting with her boyfriend of two years.

**Alexei:** _I miss you_  
 **Alexei:** _How is the vacation going? Little Alyosha having fun yet?_

Natalia doesn’t smile per se, more like a slight upturn of the corner of her mouth.

**Natalia:** _Oh yeah. Lyoshka’s having a great time telling our parents all about his new friend he met at the park this morning.  
_ **Alexei:** _New friend?  
_ **Natalia:** _Some little red haired girl  
_ **Natalia:** _Her name is Ava. She does ballet too._

Natalia can picture Alexei laughing, already predicting his response. She isn’t surprised when the next text from him reads that the men in her family seem to have a thing for redheads accompanied by a winking emoji.

Which isn’t wrong. Ivan had pitchblack hair, which Alexei had inherited, while their mother, Anya, had auburn colored hair that Natalia had inherited.

Yevgeniy sits straight up suddenly, nose twitching as he feels a sudden slight pull from within his tiny body. His sudden attention goes unnoticed by everyone else at the table, even Natlia. He hopped up into her lap and nudged at her left hand with his head until she began stroking him.

Almost instantly he calmed down and began to close his eyes once more.

Roza on the other hand was switching forms rapidly, a hummingbird one moment buzzing by Alexei’s head and then a white weasel wrapped around Alexei’s neck and draping himself over the twelve year old boy’s shoulders. The excitement that Alexei felt was clearly drifting through their bond.

Their parents took his excitement well, even asking questions about his friend and his and Natalia’s trip to the park.

While, unbeknownst to the Romanovs a blonde Ukrainian teenager was walking into the coffee shop. 

Yelena didn’t make eye contact with anyone, rather she was staring at her phone and tapping away furiously at the screen. 

**Vladimir:** _Mama wants to know when you’re coming to Moscow  
_ **Vladimir:** _She’s making Tolik and I give up our room for you, you better be thankful!_

Yelena smirked. “Vova says we’re getting his room,” Yelena explained to Nikolai. 

The daemon’s nose twitched and he nodded. “Good. I’m still surprised your father is letting us go on the train alone.”

Yelena nodded. “At the same time, he likes when I leave Ukraine for Moscow. I think he’s still hoping to convince mama to move there soon.”

Nikolai snorted. “Good luck with that! Your mama and Mushka love Kiev.” He looked straight ahead for a moment, ears twitching as he looked at the case of pastries. “Order me a cherry pastry of some sort, will you?”

Yelena wrinkled her nose in disgust but nodded; her daemon did not get the taste for cherries from her that was for sure. She wondered if her soulmate liked cherries. Then began typing on her phone once more.

**Yelena:** _I’m leaving from Odessa later tonight. Thank god. My parents have been bickering since we left Kiev for this vacation.  
_ **Vladimir:** _Gross  
_ **Yelena:** _You have no idea.  
_ **Vladimir:** _Well what do you want to do once you’re here?_

Yelena pocketed her phone and replaced it with her wallet in her hand as she ordered herself her favorite apple cake pasty, yabluchnyk, and cherry solozhenik for Nikolai along with an iced vanilla latte. 

**Yelena:** _I’d love to see a performance at the Kremlin Palace._   
**Yelena:** _Tolya could join us._

The teenager snorted as she read Vladimir’s text of ten crying emojis.

Natalia gathers up the trash at the table with Alexei’s help and the family of four make their exit of the coffee shop in Odessa.

Again, neither Natalia or Yelena notice how close they were. Yevgeniy and Nikolai only twitched one ear but otherwise didn’t notice anything different or out of the ordinary; didn’t realize that their human was within reach.

* * *

**_Manezhnaya Square,_ ** **_St. Petersburg, Russia  
_ ** **_December, 2019_ **

It’s rather poetic that the final time they anonymously run into each other is at another Christmas market, this time days before January first. 

Yelena shivered, teeth clattering together, as she walked side by side with Vladimir.

Vladimir on the other hand seemed completely at peace, ignoring the snow raining down on them as he led them to purchase some hot cocoa. Yevgeniy trotted after them, Vladimir’s daemon sitting atop his back.

Vladimir was like Yelena in the respect that he too was waiting to meet his soulmate. His daemon, not truly his but his all the same, was a pine marten with soft brown fur and golden fur on her neck and chest. Her name was Malyshka. Unlike Vladimir, she was blind. 

“I’m freezing,” Yelena complained. She scowled slightly when the daemons just laughed at her while Vladimir shot her an amused smirk. 

Vladimir shook his head. “You’d think after spending your whole life in the snow that you’d be used to this type of weather. You want to get us a snack and I’ll get us coffee?” He asked, swiftly changing the topic. 

Yelena hummed in response before turning away from him. She muttered a quick, “Make sure that Vova gets me cocoa with extra marshmallows,” to Nikolai and Malyshka as she walked away. 

She walked over to the stand selling bear jerky and Czech sausages and quickly purchased a fair amount to share not with just Vladimiri but their daemons as well. When she turned to leave she nearly stumbled over a white hare but quickly caught her balance. 

“What on earth-” she grumbled, shooting a glare at the white hare. Someone’s daemon, obviously. But her annoyance quickly turned into curiosity as she realized that not only was this daemon waiting patiently in line but that their human wasn’t with them.

Yelena knew that most people could barely be three feet away from their daemon, it physically pained them to be apart from their soul, but here this one was. Waiting in line. Careful to not stand too close to any one person and eyes moving quickly, as though looking for someone.

Yelena had a sudden impulsive urge to pet the rabbit. She blamed it on spending too much time with Vladimir. And so, without further thought to how it was wrong to do so, she bent down and let her hand gently caress the hare’s head directly between the ears.

The feelings that course through her were rather difficult to explain. It felt as though the universe itself had settled into her very being, that for the first time in her life, she’s fully put together. As if she’s found something so very dear and important to her. Something that she had never even realized that she was missing. And with her hand still resting on the hare's head, she wonders how she could have possibly gone through her whole life without feeling this feeling coursing through her veins.

The hare stares at her, eyes wide and nose twitching quickly as he drinks her in, no doubt feeling everything that she was feeling. 

He’s the one to break the silence with a soft yet firm, “Hello. I’m Yevgeniy.”

Yelena smiles ever so slightly, just the upturn of the corner of her mouth. He has a way of speaking that is very purely _not_ Yelena. But the way he looks at her, taking in every minute detail and looking past her then back to her face, that is very much one of her mannerisms. She finally stands, firmly telling herself that her legs most definitely are not shaking, and says just as softly, "Yelena."

The two are jerked from their staring as the man running the stand coughs and asks if they would like anything else and Yelena flushed as she realized that the two of them, her daemon and her, were blocking the line. Yevgeniy hops after Yelena, seemingly forgetting that he was supposed to be holding his spot in line for Natalia. He began quivering in excitement as he realized that with him meeting his person, Natalia would soon be meeting the home to her soul as well and he blurt in a rush, "Where's your other daemon?"

Yelena frowned. "Kolya is getting cocoa with Vova and Malyshka. They should be coming back any moment now." She pulls one of the Czech sausages out of the paper bag and offers a piece to Yevgeniy. Who slowly shakes his head no. Yelena nods and takes a bite of her snack, eyes darting across the crowd of people just as quickly as the hare's seem to be. She isn't sure whose emotions she's feeling; her own or Yevgeniy's. 

In either case, her heart is thundering in her chest and she can feel her palms growing sweaty as she waits for not just her best friends but her soulmate because the meeting is inevitable now.

Sure enough, three minutes pass before an exasperated redheaded woman not much older than Yelena is walking over to them. Her hair is long and the exact same shade of fiery red as Nikolai's fur, her eyes a bright green. She is just a few centimeters shorter than Yelena and Yelena can't help but to feel a twinge of happiness at the fact that she's taller than her soulmate. 

Natalia looked between Yevgeniy and the blonde woman beside him, realization dawning on her rapidly.

The blonde woman is... cute.

She has short, shoulder length hair that has caught many snowflakes in its curls. The lightest dusting of freckles paints across her nose. Blue eyes. And she's a teensy bit taller than Natalia.

When it becomes apparent that neither woman is going to make the first move, Yevgeniy puffs up his chest and opens his mouth, completely ready to introduce them to one another but is cut off before he can even make a sound.

"Lena! There you are!" Vladimir yells, narrowly missing bumping into a family. He offers an apology but doesn't slow down. Nikolai was trotting after him, Malyshka standing on his back. "You better have saved me some jerky!" He froze, hands full with their cocoa, and looked between the two women. "And you are?"

Yelena narrowed her eyes at Vladimir. She had never wanted to smack him before as much as she did in this very moment.

Natalia on the other hand, finds this to be very amusing and she finally introduced herself to the blonde woman. "Natalia."

Yelena mouthed the name to herself, not really realizing what she was doing, and flushed slightly as she thought to herself, ' _Natasha. Lisichka.'_ It felt almost wrong to make nicknames for someone she'd only just met. But... well, she had been waiting for a very long time to meet the other woman after all.

"Yelena."

Neither paid any mind to Vladimir who was watching the both of them, sipping from his cup of cocoa as though watching a very interesting television series.

Nikolai weaved himself between Yelena's legs but never once took his eyes off of Natalia. 

Yelena glanced down at the daemon. "This impatient little shit-" "Rude!" "-is Nikolai."

Natalia smiled warmly, a tinge of nervousness just barely crossing her expression before she could school her features. "Hello, Nikolai." She leaned down and held her hand out, palm facing upward, giving Nikolai the choice to touch her.

Yelena winced slightly, a feeling of guilt coursing through her and to Yevgeniy as she thought over how she had touched her daemon without his consent, without thinking. Yevgeniy sensed her train of thought and quickly nudged her leg with his head, eyes fluttering closed as he felt feelings that weren't his, something so new to him. He hated that Yelena practically screamed across their bond that she wished she had been better in that first meeting, that she had been like Natalia. And he pushed forward feelings of forgiveness and love and understanding straight from him to her.

While Nikolai tilted his head, eyes closed, and let his person touch him for the first time.

Natalia gasped softly, jaw dropping ever so slightly as she took in the same feelings that Yelena and Yevgeniy had felt just minutes ago; the feeling of finding a home she'd never even known that she was looking for.

_"I'm so glad to be meeting you finally,"_ all four think.

**Author's Note:**

> Teensy bit of a cliffhanger but who knows, I may come back and add more to this.


End file.
